Our Project
How reliable is your kill switch?
Biosafety is an important issue facing synthetic biology and concerns
surrounding synthetic organisms escaping into the environment has prompted
the development of novel methods of bio-containment. Many iGEM projects that
require an organism to be released from the lab use kill switches to address
concerns about the effect of GMOs on the environment. Unfortunately, kill switches
- inducible genetic devices that cause cell death - are poorly categorised in
the standard registry of genetic parts. There is a distinct lack of quantitative
data which prevents them being used with confidence.
Our project seeks to investigate the effectiveness of different types of kill switch,
to quantify their robustness after several generations and compare the stability of these
devices when integrated into the genome or carried on a plasmid. We hope to improve the standard
of biosafety in the synthetic biology community and provide valuable data for the field to move forward.
The compiling of the wiki screen shows that no containment systems created in iGEM is robust: they lack the above quantification and are mostly one mutation away from failure.
-Sara Aguiton and Claire Mayer, iGEM
We have designed and tested three types of kill switch:
- KillerRed and KillerOrange: These homologues of GFP produce
high levels of ROS, which lyse the cell and also damage DNA.
- Lysosyme C: This is a common enzyme used in laboratories in
the Gallus gallus form and is the basis of our enzymatic kill switch.
When transported into the periplasm of gram
negative bacteria it causes lysis by hydrolysing the glycosidic bond connecting
N-acetylmuramic acid and N-acetylglucosamine, breaking down the peptidoglycan
of the cell wall. T
- DNAse 1: This is an endonuclease that non-specifically
cleaves DNA.
You can find our models the time taken for cell lysis for these 3 kill switches here
What is a kill switch?
We have been working hard to try to uncover what people think a kill switch is.
We have been interviewing acedemics, key public science figures and university
students what they think it means and how they view biosafety as a whole. You can find out more here.
Synthetic Biology Education
Our Human Practices is centred around improving public engagement
and tackling the lack of education of synthetic biology in the UK and overseas.
In particular we are targeting education at a secondary school and university level,
focusing on the interdisciplinary nature of the subject and assessing diversity.
We want to highlight the benefits and potential applications of this new scientific field,
as well as trying to uncover the reasons why synthetic biology doesn’t get as much positive
attention as it should have.
We are working hard to introduce a new synthetic biology module to
The University of Exeter’s curriculum, which will be available to students as soon as September 2017 and has a large emphasis on
biosafety.
For school children we have created a board game, BioMech, which educates students in key synthetic biology
concepts in an easy to understand and engaging way. Furthermore, we have visited school and fairs, giving
talks and running workshops where we aim to give children an introduction to what synthetic biology is and
how it already affects their lives for the better.
By interviewing researchers, academics and other professionals within the scientific community
and presenting their opinions in a fun and educational way, we hope to have made synthetic biology a more
attractive discipline to the general public.
